Necris Omega

Maybe I ought to try naming my party something hilarious like that, seeing as I usually just forget about their names and regard every character by their roles anyways. On a replay, I mean. Though he has a tremendous sense of humor, I just wouldn't feel right sending Jeff a test party with all characters named from Moe's Tavern skits...

This is part of what made BoE so hard for me - I loved to hoard things, the weirder, the better. Unfortunately, items with custom graphics couldn't be transferred beyond the scenario they were in. These weren't just unique in name, they even LOOKED unique! Awesome! I had to have them, and keep them forever and ever... and no, couldn't do it. Drove me nuts.

Way back in the day, I used to name my Exile party members after my friends growing up. I was terrible at those games, and got them killed regularly...

Originally Posted By: O tempora o mores ...and he loves changing what requires collecting. That's the rub for me. I all too often end up stockpiling, say, Iron Bars in hopes they turn out to be worth a mint to the poor struggling smith on the edge of civilization. 90% of the game and enough Iron to build a railroad from Draco to Remote later...

Once color-shifting entered the scene, things did get better, but Avadon really knocked it out with its expansive (item) graphics library.

I honestly can't decide if I like the simple elegance of the A6 editor, or the greater versatility of the "classic" ones...

I tend to play the games on Normal. Easy is too trivial, and anything higher is just too tedious. In the end, if a game isn't fun, a game isn't fun, and that'll always be variable from person to person. If I am not amused, if I am not entertained, than something is wrong. Personally, I'm willing to take whatever steps necessary to ensure a game is fun, be it knocking down the difficulty for fights the designer should have stopped designing half way through, to accessing the game console and entering /killeverythingeverrightnownoiamnotasking to clear an area if something glitches and I get sent backwards a few fights. It does lend itself to a strange conundrum though - the jack-of-all-trades vs. savant issue. Games are so often balanced towards the savant, while offering so many options for "buffet" style building, it's really a cutting dichotomy. I want to explore everything, but if I do that, I won't be able to succeed. I really ran into this in Avadon. Thankfully there was a respec. option so as to have the best of both worlds... to an extent.

Eh, for me it was less a case of, "Ooh, this might be useful!" and more of a, "ooh, this is interesting!" kind of thing. My own little trove of shiny things. Then again, some of it WAS for later use, like all those bolts I saved before getting a decent crossbow, but... meh, boring.

I've never sat down to a 4th ed. game, but all the hardcore gamers I know treat it like it was a poisonous snake they found in their underwear drawer that had replaced their underwear with exploding tarantulas. From what I've read, not experienced mind you, I... can see and understand why they're upset. What they did to the Faerun setting is... disturbing, and while I do like the idea that Lolth would use reshaping her minions in her image as a blessing as opposed to a curse more, everything else... I'm sure some people will still like it. For everyone else, there's Pathfinder.

I did have the strange fascination with collecting every "unique" item I could find and stashing it in Hawke's Manse... I also stashed any "cursed" items in the trash pit.

Originally Posted By: Kennedy (Then again this could result in the game raising the INT of your fighters every level up) That's why I don't care for stats which are (stupidly) auto-allocated. Yeah, it seems Avernum's sliding more and more away from the Hardcore min-max scene, but... even Avadon ended up in that box at the very end. Fighting Redbeard, "optional" boss or no, without a highly optimized party... NOT fun.

Perhaps Dark exists not as an absence of light, but some other kind of particle in this universe? Maybe dark matter/dark energy is more common/tangible/apparent in the existence of Avernum.

In retrospect, I still have to wonder about the aqua cave floors and violet cave walls... Too many mushrooms, I think. That said, looking more into the graphics of the Screenshots, it looks like at least some of the walls appear to be made of irregular stone as opposed to clean cut bricks. The walls are still clean cut, mind you, but the effect is still better. That said, I have to wonder how practical adobe really would be in the underworld looking at some of the issues of composition. I'unno, I'm not an architectural engineer.

Simplicity in terms of terrain and appearance, not game play then. Honestly, I think the cleanliness "problem" comes from the perfectly geometric walls Avernum's been host to. From the Screenshots, it really, really doesn't look nearly so clean cut. The floor still looks/feels a little too geometric in terms of the raised areas, however, and that could have also contributed to the problem.

I always thought it would have been cool if Jeff took all the various and unique "Potion" graphics from the Alchemy system in the classical Avernum and used those directly. As those are now outdated and defunct graphics, however... probably not gonna happen.

Sounds exploity. But, if you were playing on torment, (and I'm going to go with Enraged Slith in assuming you are) then... meh, whatever. I remember doing that a few times in Dragon Age at some point myself.

Ah, downranking. The thing is, do not the subsequent levels of spells in Avernum remain the same in terms of costs? ... that said, I will say this, however - the system IS inconsistent in terms of Healing. That still has separate spells for the same exact effect, and is fairly inelegant. Hm... That said, I would love to see it if higher levels of spells did have more exotic/added effects compared to their earlier versions, particularly with raw damage spells. Some spells did, like Bind Foe, but... I'unno. Maybe Bolt of Fire 3+ can add a small DoT or the like.

Mostly II. III is still in the "we'll see" category, but Diablo the original was so direct and so simple there really wasn't even a lot of room for variation. Warrior, Rogue (archer), Sorcerer - Chocolate, Vanilla, and Strawberry. Diablo II? It's not just playing to one of multiple "planned" lines, it's taking the lines and rewiring them. You can take a Necromancer or Sorceress and bend them towards using Melee. You can play a paladin more like a pure caster. You can take a Barbarian, dump everything into Warcries and make a "Bard" - a build that kills things by yelling at them. Yeah, they're often NOT going to be able to vault past the ultimate challenges at the highest tier of difficulty, but you'll still have a lot of fun in the meantime.

The more a player is able to move and act, the more things a player is able to do in a given turn, the more active they are in playing a game, the more they feel like they're playing. The more they feel like they're playing, the more engaged they'll be. I prefer my combat to be more dynamic than the Avadon system. It's not a bad system, mind you, but I don't think it's ideal. Indefinitely locking a player's movement down is… it's not as bad as being slowed in the early Geneforge series, but it's a similar problem.

I tend to side on the path of greater mobility myself. When Geneforge lost its enfuriatingly restrictive AP requirements, the combat became so much better. Having near by opponents slow you down and decrease your AP, smash you into goo, or some combination of the two would be preferable to being randomly glued to one spot due to escaping adjacency.

That's often an appeal all it's own too. Anyone whose played Diablo II with one of the more wacky build that aren't optimal, but unique and fun, knows what I'm talking about.

I think Breath of Fire did that one time...

Thing is, Jeff IS rewriting the entire series, or at least the first (best) half of it. If he wants to go ahead and throw some major metropolis where ever, more power to him. After remaking the first three, 4-6 will feel old and clunky by comparison anyways. And it's not like it really needs to survive more than 2 games - Ruined World takes place on the surface. I'm not looking for a Avernum/Exile CLONE, I'm looking for Avernum +X. If that means 4-6 suffer, so be it. They're already a massive deviation from the original Avernum in style and scope as it is.

It would be interesting if it's a city within civilized/mainstream Avernum that ends up being destroyed in the course of its plotline. Then again, something more exotic, like more friendly Slithzerkai or semi-neutral Nephilim would also be cool.

I'unno. After A4 had Efram, leading Demonslayer Fanboi in all Avernum getting the story of his favoritest weapon completely wrong, I say all bets are off. That and the random addition of Cavewood fruits, which I'm convinced must taste of schnozzberries, and I say, let what comes of the remakes come. Really, though, I think the only way Jeff could really, really make the remakes fresh is if they fly off the wheels a bit. And, honestly, if these remakes throw us old timey vets some creative curveballs... so be it! It's a remake, after all, and for me, a remake that changes things up is much better than a direct sequel that tries to ignore its roots.